EPIC Presolicitation Notice.pdf

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Acquisition and Grants Office (AGO), Western Acquisition Division (WAD) intends to award a single-award Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contract with a five-year ordering period in support of the NOAA, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), Weather Program Office (WPO), Earth Prediction Innovation Center (EPIC).

The EPIC requirements are for advancing weather modeling skill using an Earth system modeling approach, reclaiming and maintaining international leadership in the area of numerical weather prediction, and improving the transition of research into operations in collaboration with the external weather and Earth system modeling communities. The general objective and scope of this IDIQ is to obtain state-of-the-art software architecture, software engineering and scientific and technical support services to maintain and continuously expand the community modeling infrastructure that facilitates robust user support and easy access for advanced Earth system models, applications and components in the framework of the Unified Forecast System (UFS), a community-based, coupled, comprehensive Earth modeling system spanning spatial scales from local to global, and temporal scales from hourly to seasonal forecasts. More information regarding the current EPIC program can be found here (https://wpo.noaa.gov/epic/).

The solicitation is anticipated to be issued pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) part 15 - Contracting by Negotiation, in conjunction with FAR Subpart 12.6 - Streamlined Procedures for Evaluation and Solicitation for Commercial Products and Commercial Services.

The planned Request for Proposal (RFP) number is 1305M325R0014. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) for this procurement is 541511, Custom Computer Programming Services, which has a corresponding size standard of $34 million in annual receipts. The solicitation is anticipated to be issued as a Total Small Business Set-Aside.

Note that the response date of July 30, 2025 reflected in the SAM.gov presolicitation posting is the anticipated closing date for the final solicitation. The complete RFP package is expected to be released on or around June 25, 2025 on SAM.gov.

Offerors are advised that the source selection is anticipated to be conducted in two phases utilizing an Advisory Down-Select. Only the Phase 1 submissions will be required at the time of the solicitation closing date.

Participation in Phase 1 is mandatory. Failure to participate in Phase 1 will preclude further consideration of the Offeror’s submission in Phase 2. After all Phase 1 submissions have been evaluated, Advisory Notifications will be issued to all Offerors who submitted a Phase 1 proposal. Offerors who rate most highly for Phase 1 will be advised to proceed to Phase 2.

Offerors who were not among the most highly rated will be advised not to proceed to Phase 2.

The intent of this Advisory Notification is to minimize proposal development costs for Offerors with little chance of receiving an award. This will be a recommendation only and discontinuing the pursuit of the requirement following the notification is voluntary.

The Advisory Notification will include the Phase 2 submission deadline, which is anticipated to be approximately three (3) weeks from the date of notification. Phase 2 will include submissions related to Technical Approach, Past Performance, and Price. Offerors will not be permitted to revise their Phase 1 submission during Phase 2. The initial Phase 1 Technical Capability submission will inform the best value determination along with the other Phase 2 evaluation factors.

https://wpo.noaa.gov/epic/

To help potential Offerors to prepare for the Phase 1 submission, Offerors are advised that, amongst other administrative items, the Phase 1 submission is anticipated to consist of the following:

● Technical Capability Project information for up to five (5) distinct project experience samples demonstrating the Offeror’s capability to successfully perform the requirements of this contract based on the Offeror’s previous experience with projects of a similar size, scope and complexity. The evaluation will focus on the following technical areas:

○ Project Management as described by the following definition/tasks:

1. Clearly establish and prioritize strategic goals and technical approaches;

2. Apply efficient and effective agile project management principles to allow coordinating tasks and shifts in priorities in a multiple-organizational and multiple-stakeholder environment with competing interests, including:

(a) Ensure a high-rate of objectives completion and high-levels of business value.

(b) Establish a risk registry addressing change management and adapting to priority shifts.

(c) Coordinate tasks that involve multiple organizations across sectors, stakeholders and dependencies.

(d) Define success metrics for tracking objectives and business value, and engaging internal and external stakeholders.

(e) Establish a communications plan that addresses the need of consistent community and stakeholder engagement.

● Software Infrastructure as described by the following definition/tasks:

1. Develop and maintain automated CI/CD pipelines, integrated with a public-facing, end-to-end testing and development environment;

2. Develop cloud-ready, platform-agnostic, inter-operable, portable solutions for community Earth Systems Modeling (ESM), including containers, unified software stacks for ESMs, and infrastructure as code (IaC)

3. Provide software infrastructure integrated with high performance computing platforms and CI/CD pipelines to facilitate testing, evaluation and coordination of community model development and integration into the ESM code base;

4. Ensure all products and services are fully documented, including technical specifications, benchmarking results, and performance metrics.

5. Comply with Agency/Customer Organizational Information Technology policies and best practices;

6. Facilitate research to operations and operations to research (R2O2R) in the Weather, Water, and Climate enterprise.

● Configuration Management as described by the following definition/tasks:

1. Manage ESM code repositories, including integration of alternative options of dynamical cores, physics packages, and Earth system components;

2. Exercise state-of-the art software architecture and engineering practices for software integration, including but not limited to, maintaining and improving unit, regression, cross-platform, and integration tests through a hierarchical test framework, integrating new tests, updating baselines, and resolving failures.

3. Coordinate code reviews, integrate pull requests, and deploy minimal workflow end-to-end (WE2E) tests;

4. Coordinate continuous integration teams and tools, including automated testing on supported computing platforms aligned with the software infrastructure.

5. Provide and maintain tools associated with code management, including ticketing, wikis, and proper documentation using open-source repositories.

6. Develop and support a data management framework that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, in support of data needs for development, testing, and evaluation of the ESM modules, pre-processing, data assimilation, post-processing, verification and validation, and visualization.

● Systems Integration as described by the following definition/tasks:

1. Integrate modules, pre-processing, data assimilation, post-processing, verification and validation, and visualization packages into ESM code, where applicable.

2. Align all ESM system integration activities with CI/CD pipelines and coordinate with community developers for supported applications and components.

3. Benchmark features to ensure forecast skill and computational performance, ensuring updates do not break functionality.

4. Deliver platform-agnostic, portable, end-to-end prototypes of ESM applications with optimized computational performance and integrated to public facing operational and/or research-oriented verification and validation packages to allow tracking of forecast skills;

5. Develop and release system architecture, and publish infrastructure documentation and software standards for supported codes and systems.

● Community Release Planning, Coordination, and Support as described by the following definition/tasks:

1. Support and coordinate public releases of ESMs with clearly identified procedures, stakeholders, timelines, roles and responsibilities, and communication plans;

2. Support the technical aspects of the release process by ensuring thoroughly tested platform-agnostic ESM prototypes across on-premise, cloud, and limited (e.g., linux or MacOS) computing platforms;

3. Coordinate a release team with contributors from multiple institutions and teams;

4. Provide open-source code and associate datasets and containers (if applicable) in public-facing code repositories and data management platforms with appropriate open-source and open-development licenses;

5. Provide up-to-date user’s guidance and documentations as part of the releases.

● Advanced User Support as described by the following definition/tasks:

1. Manage and continuously improve public-facing user support forums with clearly defined standard operating procedures;

2. Develop and maintain tutorials, instructional materials, and documentation.

3. Develop and host in-person training, tutorials, and hackathons in pubic-facing computing environments;

4. Support seamless user access to code repositories and public-facing computing environments for training on cloud and/or on-premise platforms;

5. Support all relevant model configurations, applications, and components;

6. Identify and maintain a database of subject matter experts (SMEs) to provide timely, informed user assistance;

7. Maintain and update frequently asked questions (FAQs) for ESMs;

8. Integrate user support services to program websites, wikis, and/or social media.

● Community & Stakeholder Engagement as described by the following definition/tasks:

1. Leads coordination meetings between stakeholders, including meeting facilitation, conduct user surveys for identifying technical requirements, key metrics and/or standards;

2. Summarizes stakeholder inputs and provides recommendations for standards, policies, and processes to decision-making bodies;

3. Consolidate stakeholder inputs and summarize them in reports with recommendation for improving community infrastructure, releases and advanced user support activities.;

4. Provide opportunities/channels for incorporating stakeholder feedback into relevant on-going and future work items;

5. Support web-based artifacts (websites, wikis, portals, social media), including maintenance and content development for these artifacts in compliance in federal government regulations and best practices (e.g., Section 508 compliance, Privacy Protection Act, human-centered design, and Search-Engine Optimized);

6. Plan and host community meetings and workshops, including developing agendas, securing meeting venues, facilitating logistics for in-person and virtual participants, and drafting final workshop reports;

7. Coordinate and publish community newsletters to facilitate communication engagement artifacts;

8. Showcase program outcomes at conferences and through online channels.

9. Integrate engagement strategies, products, and services into web-based artifacts.

● Support and develop Machine Learning (ML) and hybrid based Earth system models (ESMs) as described by the following definition/tasks:

1. Develop an ML software architecture on cloud and on-premise platforms leveraging public-facing code repositories that enables community access to ML based ESMs, including initialization, training, fine-tuning, and visualization;

2. Integration of ML models with Physically-based ESMs;

3. Establish and optimize computational performance of training and/or near real-time workflows for ML-based ESMs;.

4. Support CI/CD pipelines for ML-based or hybrid ESMs .

* Note: Offerors may submit up to five projects total, NOT five projects per technical area.*

● To be considered for evaluation, a project must meet the following criteria:

○ Be any of the following:

■ A single funded contract or purchase order, including prime awards, subcontracts, and commercial contracts; or

■ A single funded task order awarded under an IDIQ or Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) including single or multiple award IDIQs/BPAs; or

■ A single-award IDIQ, including all funded task orders issued against it. Note that the same task order cannot be submitted as both a single task order and as part of a single-award IDIQ (i.e., it cannot be double counted); or

■ An Other Transaction Authority (OTA) award issued under 10 U.S.C. 4021 or other applicable authority.

○ At least six (6) months of performance must be completed as of the date of proposal submission, or performance is completed.

○ Some portion of performance occurred within the past five (5) years from the date of proposal submission.

○ Projects may be from the prime Offeror or a contractor teaming arrangement member, including proposed subcontractors or individual members of a joint venture.

For offers from joint ventures, a minimum of one project must be provided from each joint venture member (Ref. 13 CFR 125.8(e). Offerors submitting a project performed by a Joint Venture or performed as a subcontractor may only claim evaluation credit for the portion of that project performed by the team member who is part of the EPIC offer.

○ Offerors relying on the technical capabilities of non-prime team members under this factor, if selected for award, will be required as a condition of award to subcontract to those team members a workshare commensurate with their proportion of the proposed IDIQ level qualifications, in compliance with applicable limitations on subcontracting, unless explicitly waived by the Contracting Officer.

● For each project submitted, in addition to basic information about the project submitted on an Attachment provided with the solicitation, the Offeror must submit official supporting contract documentation substantiating the evaluation elements claimed, including the following as applicable:

○ The contract award (and modifications if applicable) identifying the Contractor, Customer, Contract Value, Award/effective date, and period of performance.

○ The awarded SOW/PWS/Scope of Work describing the general scope, nature, complexity, and purpose of the services the customer acquired under the contract.

○ Any other verifiable, official contract document deemed necessary by the Offeror to substantiate the claimed element, e.g., Contract Data Requirements Listing (CDRL), awarded Staffing Plan, awarded price proposal, written Technical Direction from the customer, approved invoices, etc. To be considered "official" supporting contract documents, the documents must have been either provided by or accepted by the Government or client point(s) of contact.

○ Offerors may redact sensitive portions of contract documents and/or submit excerpts of the contract documents at its discretion, provided the unredacted information clearly supports the claimed evaluation elements. Offerors are encouraged to only submit the minimum supporting documents necessary to demonstrate the claimed element.

● Technical Capability Narrative. The Offeror shall submit a Technical Capability narrative demonstrating the Offeror’s capability to successfully perform the requirements of this contract based on the Offeror’s previous experience with projects of a similar size, scope and complexity, including the Technical Capability Project information and/or any other pertinent capability-related expertise or qualifications at the discretion of the Offeror. The Technical Capability Narrative may include qualifications that don’t align with the Technical Capability Project criteria. If the contractor is leveraging the qualifications of non-prime team members (e.g., subcontractors, joint venture members), this section shall address how the specific team member(s)’ qualifications will be leveraged during performance in compliance with applicable limitations on subcontracting. The Technical Capability Narrative is limited to eight (8) pages.

Offerors are advised that the above information is provided to increase transparency and facilitate proposal preparation and planning activities, but does not govern proposal submission and evaluation. Only the final solicitation issued on SAM.gov will govern proposal submission and evaluation. Offerors should closely review the final solicitation prior to submission of a proposal. No proposal submissions in response to this presolicitation notice are being accepted.

http://sam.gov

Offerors with questions regarding the information detailed in this presolicitation notice may direct questions to Gwendolynn.Boyle@noaa.gov and Grace.Parker@noaa.gov. Offerors are advised that NOAA does not intend to reply back directly to interested parties with answers to questions.

NOAA will endeavor to address those questions publicly in the final solicitation posting and/or include them in a subsequent Q&A amendment to ensure transparent and fair access to solicitation information. Offerors are strongly discouraged from submitting questions about portions of the solicitation not detailed in this presolicitation notice at this stage (e.g., Phase 2 criteria and/or submission instructions, PWS requirements, etc.), as that information will be contained in the solicitation.

Offerors are hereby notified that the solicitation and subsequent amendments to the solicitation will only be available for download at SAM.gov; this office will not issue hard copy solicitations.

By submission of a proposal, the contractor acknowledges the requirement that a prospective awardee must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) database prior to award, during performance, and through final payment of any contract resulting from this solicitation. Lack of registration in the SAM database will make a contractor ineligible for award.

Contractors may obtain information on registration and annual confirmation requirements at https://sam.gov/content/home.

mailto:Gwendolynn.Boyle@noaa.gov mailto:Grace.Parker@noaa.gov